This tutorial aims to teach you how to play LTK. We will not dive into why you might wanna play LTK,
because if you are reading this tutorial, chances are you already want to give it a try. Please excuse me if I made the wrong presumption.

This tutorial tries to summarize gameplay as concisely as possible. Only key rules are covered so that you will be able to play a barebone game while reading this
tutorial.  We will fill in other important concepts in the next tutorial, which enables you to play a standard game.

Game Structure
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LTK is a card-based combat game. Each character has some hp and some cards. Use your cards wisely to destroy your opponents.

A typical game goes like this: Setup => Character 1's turn => Character 2's turn => ... => Character 8's turn => Character 1's turn => ...
Characters take turns until a winner is decided. In rare cases, it's possible for a game to draw, or to continue indefinitely.

During setup, you select a hero as your character. Different heroes have different abilities.
A hero also has an upper limit of hp (typically 4 or 3). You start with this amount of hp, and you can never heal past this limit.
For convenience, we will call this number "maxhp".

A turn consists of 6 phases.
    1. Draw Phase - draw 2 cards
    2. Action Phase - do stuffs (this is where most things happen)
    3. Discard Phase - discard "extra" cards
We will talk about the remaining phases in the next tutorial. For now, nothing happens in those phases.

The Standard Edition includes 108 playing cards. Each character starts with 4 cards, and draws from a central deck shared by all characters.
Used cards goes to the discard pile. When the deck is depleted, discard pile is shuffled, and becomes the new deck.

At end of turn (the Discard Phase), if you have X hp and more than X cards in hand, you must discard a few cards in hand so that you have exactly X left.
If you have ≤X cards in hand, nothing happens. You can't voluntarily discard cards.
The number X is called Hand Limit.

Playing Cards
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There are 3 types of playing cards: Basic Cards, Equipment Cards, and Scroll Cards.
If you have a physical set (as opposed to LTK Online), you may have Hero Cards, Role Cards, HP Cards, etc. Those are only for bookkeeping purposes.

Basic cards consists of 30 Strikes, 15 Dodges, and 8 Peaches. They form the core of vanilla LTK.

In Action Phase, you can use a Strike card to strike another character. Target character may try to dodge.
If he/she fails to dodge, or chooses not to dodge, target takes 1 hp of damage. Regardless of the result, you can't strike again.
This is called the 1-strike-per-action-phase rule.

Dodge cards are used to dodge a strike. You can't use a Dodge proactively. It is only used in response to strikes.

Note that Strike cards and strike events are different. A Strike card initiates a strike event, and a Dodge card responds to a strike event.
Some hero abilities and equipment abilities allow characters to initiate a strike without using a Strike card.
Similarly, it's possible to dodge a strike without using a Dodge card.

A peach can be used in two ways:
    1. In Action Phase, use a peach on your character to add 1 hp. If you are at full health (hp = maxhp), you can't use peaches.
    2. In a Near Death event, use a peach on the dying character to add 1 hp. (We will talk about Near Death in a moment.)

In short, Strikes deal damage, Dodges prevent damage, and Peaches heal you after taking damage.

Near Death
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When a charater's hp drops below 1, he/she doesn't just die. Instead, a Near Death event is triggered. During this event, all characters have a chance to rescue
the dying character.

Starting from the Current Turn Character and going counter-clockwise, each character can choose to use a peach on the dying character or not. This is the only time one can use a peach on another character.
    - If you choose to use a peach, and the dying character's hp ≥1, Near Death ends and game continues.
    - If not, you may choose again (until you run out of peaches or until you decide to pass).
    - If you choose not to use a peach, the next character chooses.
    - If, after every character has passed, the dying character's hp is still ≤0, he/she dies.

In an 8-player game, it's common for allies to try to save you.
Every character has a chance to save the dying character, including the dying character him/herself, and even the attacker who caused the Near Death!

Depending on game modes, a kill may reward or penalize the killer. We'll talk about that later.
Sidenote: If a character died to non-player damage, or died to non-damage, there is no killer, and thus no reward or penalty.

More Playing Cards
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Scroll Cards are single-use cards like Basic Cards. They are used in Main Phase to do all kinds of stuffs: offense, healing, harassment, etc. There are 2 exceptions.
    1. Delayed Scrolls are like timed bombs. They are also used in Main Phase. However, using a delayed scroll only installs it next to the target character.
       It will activate in that character's turn, typically causing some demerit to that character.
    2. Ward is the only scroll that can be and must be used reactively. Like Dodges, Wards cannot be used proactively.
       They are used right before another scroll activates. The scroll in question is "nullified" and doesn't have any effect.
       Note that Wards themselves are scrolls, so a second Ward can cancel the first Ward, allowing the original scroll to proceed normally.
Sidenote: Scrolls that aren't delayed are called Non-Delayed Scrolls for obvious reasons. In addition, the community often refer to them as "Regular" Scrolls.

Equipment Cards, while equipped, give you powerful abilities. An equipment in hand can be equipped by using it in Action Phase.
Equipments in hand are of no use besides equipping them. Equipped equipments are placed in your Equipment Area. They don't count towards Hand Limit in Discard Phase.

Each character has 4 slots in equipment area: Weapon slot, Defense slot, Offensive Horse slot, Defensive Horse slot.
Each equipment has a type, and must be placed in the corresponding slot. (e.g. Weapon cards must be placed in Weapon slot)
Each slot holds at most 1 card. Placing an equipment into an occupied slot causes existing equipment to be discarded.
You can't voluntarily unequip an equipment before equipping a new one.

Each Weapon has an attack range and provides you with some abilities. We will explain distance and range in a bit.

Distance and Range
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LTK is typically played with 6 or 8 characters. Characters sit in a circular shape and game proceeds counter-clockwise.
(That is, after your turn, the character to your right takes a turn.)
Say there are 8 characters alive:
        F   E   D
    G               C
        H   A   B
From A's perspective, distances to and from other characters are:
        distance to     distance from
    B       1               same
    C       2               same
    D       3               same
    E       4               same
    F       3               same
    G       2               same
    H       1               same
By default, all characters' attack range is 1. You can only strike characters within your attack range.
If you have an (equipped) weapon, your attack range is equal to your weapon's range.
With long range weapons, it's possible to attack another character while avoiding retaliation.

Horses also extend your reach. Unlike weapons, horses modify distances, so that distance-based scrolls can reach farther.
In contrast, high attack range only affects strikes but not scrolls.
Here's a caveat: distances in LTK is asymmetric. Offensive horse (commonly called -1 horse) reduces your distance to other characters by 1.
Defensive horse (+1 horse) increases other characters' distances to you by 1.

For example, if character A from our last example has both +1 horse and -1 horse, and character E has a +1 horse, here's the modified distance table:
        distance to     distance from
    B       1               2
    C       1               3
    D       2               4
    E       4               5
    F       2               4
    G       1               3
    H       1               2
Now, if character B doesn't have a weapon, he/she cannot strike A.
Notice how distances from A to B/H are not 0. LTK's distance rule states that a character's distance to and from him/herself is always 0,
and distances to and from other characters are always ≥1.

When a character dies, he/she is removed from distance calculation.

Everything Else
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We're almost done!  There's one last thing we haven't covered: Judgements. Feel free to skip this part for now, and refer back when necessary.

Judgements are a type of events. When a rule requires character X to "do a judgement", or to "judge", character X reveals a card from top of deck.
This card is called the Judgement Card, and its color, suit and rank are the results of the judgement. How these results are interpreted depends on the context.

Last words
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That's it! You can play classic 1v1 games now. (Look up cards you don't know in Main Reference.)
Read a little more and you will be able to play standard mode!

